


Manipulation

by Deonara2012



Category: ATEEZ (Band), SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: whole_new_world, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 12:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20865920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deonara2012/pseuds/Deonara2012
Summary: Mingi wakes up in lab, finds out he's no longer human, and meets the rest of the pack. Only one scientist is on their side. Thankfully.





	Manipulation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the DreamWidth Community Whole_New_World, prompt 10: Genetics

Mingi started awake, half sitting up before the tubes and wires connected to him pulled him back down to the bed. He lay there a minute, trying to remember why he lay in a bed, and in a hospital, of all places. He hadn't had a real bed in… a very long time. He couldn't remember when, and he usually didn't try. 

He'd become a war orphan at 11 and had spent the next seven years trying to stay alive with the rest of the homeless orphans, sometimes with a group of people, sometimes alone. Until someone approached him, asked him if he'd like to earn some money, a place to live, regular food.

Naturally, he'd jumped at the chance. He'd signed the paper they'd showed him, and then….

Then? He didn't remember. He settled deeper into the bed, the pillow a soft cloud. He felt clean for the first time in forever, too. That… was probably the best part. 

When he felt well enough to get up, to move and walk, it took awhile to get to that point because things didn't seem quite… here they used to be. With help, though, he managed to get his coordination back, something he hadn't had to do since he'd gone through puberty.

"You are here to earn your bed, your food, and your money," a man he hadn't seen before explained to him when he could get around without having to rest. "You'll be training with others. Work hard, and it will all go well."

They brought him to a cube, one in a line of four, facing four others. It held a bed, a low table, a sink, a toilet, and a shower. The walls were transparent, even those around the toilet. It didn't bother him, because he hadn't had any real privacy since 11 years old. Regular water - a chance for a regular shower - he felt was a good trade. The others seemed to feel the same, eight of them all told. 

He didn't meet them until their first training, all of them a measure of clumsy, looking as ill as he felt. He didn't remember being ill.

"I don't think we were ill," Yunho said, sitting against the back wall with Mingi during a break they all still needed. 

"We woke up in a hospital," Mingi pointed out.

Yunho shook his head. "It wasn't a hospital," he said. "It was… I think it's a lab."

Mingi frowned. "A lab?" 

"Yeah." Yunho reached up, slowly - although Mingi couldn't tell if it were because he still had a hard time moving, or if he didn't want to startle Mingi - and slid his fingers into Mingi's hair.

Mingi couldn't have described the feeling that went through him. If he could have purred, he would have. As it was, he went utterly limp, his muscles and everything relaxing. He'd never had that happen to him before. 

"Things feel weird. Different. Like, I'm not even sure we still have hair. I think it's… genetically something else," Yunho said, and took his hand out of Mingi's hair. 

Mingi almost whimpered, straightening up. It took awhile for his mind to catch up. "What?" he asked.

He tried the same thing, moving slowly, and watched as Yunho's eyes closed, a look of pleasure on his face as Mingi's fingertips scraped gently across his scalp. He realized, after a minute, that Yunho had been right. Something had changed. His hair felt… different, although he couldn't have said how. 

HongJoong crouched down in front of them. "Come on," he said. "They want us working again."

Yunho groaned. Mingi didn't know if he did so because of the impending work, or because Mingi had to take his hand back. Cautiously, after he'd stood up, Mingi touched his own hair. It felt… different. And not… bad. Just… weird.

He shook his head. He didn't know enough about anything to judge.

The next time he got close to the teacher, though, he brushed the man's hair with his fingertips. Definitely not the same as his, the difference almost startling.

Were they even human anymore? and if not… how did they get that way?

The place Mingi called home was a square cube connected with three others, facing the other four. He had San on one side, and WooYoung on the other, with HongJoong directly across from him. It had a bed - soft and warm, everything he wanted over the previous years - a sink, toilet, and a low table. He had regular food, didn't get too cold or too hot to sleep.

One thing Mingi liked about his home: he didn't freeze, and he didn't feel like he'd melt. The people - scientists, if he believed HongJoong, and he had no reason not to - kept the cubes at a decent temperature. As a general rule, Mingi would take this time to lay down, nap a little, to get some energy back. He'd tried, but restlessness had driven him back to his feet, and he paced along the wall that paralleled the hallway between the two sets of four. He sort of noticed the others doing the same, though it didn't help.

A voice - no, not the voice, the words - brought him to a stop. "They need to spend time together. Not eating, though that wouldn't hurt either, but just to be. At least an hour a day. If I'm right, things will improve a lot. Teamwork at least, and probably personal health."

"What makes you say that?" He didn't know that man's name. HongJoong called him Frankenstein 1, which was just as good a name as any.

"Watching them earlier," the other voice said. None of them knew him, had never seen him before. Or heard him. "I noticed an… interaction between Mingi and Yunho, and both of them performed much better in the class afterward."

Mingi blinked and looked down at Yunho. Yunho shrugged at him, not knowing any better than Mingi what he meant. 

"We can give it a try," Frankenstein 1 said, doubt in his voice. "It can't hurt. If it helps, then we'll add that into their schedule."

"I'd like to observe," the new voice said, fading as the two walked away, and they didn't hear the response to that.

Seokmin got the call after the project had been running for awhile, to join in because they needed his knowledge to figure out why the people in their study acted the way they did. He went in, not exactly sure what they meant, but ready to help any way he could. The head scientist barely let him get settled at his desk and didn't let him log on before pulling him to where they kept their experiments, he continued to call them. Seokmin watched them as they learned to fight, to move with an increased speed. Later, they called him in to watch these experiments - he didn't like that designation - as they paced in their cages, no matter what they called them, and recognized the way they moved. He offered his opinion, told the scientist what he thought, and then had to go back to his office to write up his thoughts in a report, and then turn it in. By the time he did that - it didn't take him long - and got back to the group, he found them piled together, some braced on a couple of bean bag chairs, the others leaning on them or across their legs. They had some sort of… hierarchy, maybe? He wasn't sure. He hadn't seen enough yet, although it was beginning to be obvious.

He'd been right, too. Their performance improved, so much so that the first time he saw them fight after that, it blew him away.

HongJoong and Yeosang, the two smallest of the group, took down four highly trained and armored men in the time it would have taken Seokmin to eat a bite of kim-chi. Neither of them looked winded, and Yeosang looked bored.

Seokmin's astonishment increased when it turned out all of them could do that. Singularly or in pairs, no matter if they worked well together or not, the trained security guards and soldiers went down just as fast. Sunghwa moved like a snake, his pretty face devoid of expression when he fought. It turned out Yeosang always looked bored. Seokmin couldn't tell if he really was bored, or if he hid how he really felt.

After watching this happen a few times, some of the scientists put a schedule together. Not long after that, the head scientist asked Seokmin for reports on his observations. Seokmin didn't have the chance to watch them in a group after that, and only saw some of the fights. He didn't think anything about it, assuming the others were doing the same thing.

Until he watching Mingi fighting on his own, against two soldiers. He took one out, and the other hit him across the back. Mingi froze, then seemed to break, attacking the man in his armor with a ferociousness Seokmin hadn't seen from any of them. For the first time, he heard one of the soldiers have to beg for help, to get him out of there. All the while, Mingi took his armor apart with a frightening calculation. It took three tranquilizers before he went down, just before he reached the soldier in the armor. All of them looked stunned at what had happened as three of the security guards swarmed him, binding him so tightly that he wouldn't be able to move when he woke up.

"To the infirmary," the head scientist said, and the guards nodded their acknowledgement. 

Seokmin had never been there. He had no reason to be, as the people who wound up in there were not the people he needed to get the information on. Instead of following immediately, he went to where the others lived. They had no privacy, their homes walled in transparent material they'd tried more than once to break. They'd had no luck, as far as he could tell, although he did see a crack in Jongho's. 

Yunho caught sight of him and frowned. "Where's Mingi?" he asked, stalking back and forth along the wall Seokmin stood in front of.

"He's in the infirmary," Seokmin told him. "Didn't they tell you?"

A snort from behind him brought him around to look at San. "No," he said. "They don't tell us anything." He smiled, displaying his disarming dimples. "Usually it doesn't matter, but he's one of ours."

Seokmin nodded. He'd noticed the pack-ish behavior of this group, and although he'd brought it up, showed the scientists, they'd ignored it. He'd managed to at least get them to allow the group time together, and they'd noticed an increase in health. They still didn't believe him. "I'm going to see him after this," he said, and looked at HongJoong, who stood at his wall, staring at Seokmin. Seokmin walked closer to him, making it easier for HongJoong to see him. "I'm not going to steal him," he added. "I just… wanted to know what will help him. It looked like they pushed him too hard."

"They always do," Yeosang muttered, sitting with his back to Seokmin. 

HongJoong didn't move, and after a moment, Seokmin looked away. It showed weakness - but it also showed that he didn't want to challenge HongJoong. He'd take the weakness to that. Seokmin knew he couldn't keep them in line as well as HongJoong could. 

"I know they push," Seokmin said to Yeosang. "They're supposed to push. It looked like he… I don't know, snapped. At least, that's what--"

"Snapped?" Yunho interrupted him.

Seokmin turned to face Yunho. "They had to sedate him."

That got them all up in arms, and he blinked in surprise at the noise and movement around him. Even Yeosang stood and faced him, teeth bared in fury.

"ENOUGH." HongJoong's voice cut through the noise, and they went silent. 

Seokmin shifted. They all looked at him, furious. He hoped they weren't ready to take it out on him. 

"They did it that way on purpose," HongJoong said softly, his voice carrying. "They meant to break him. They kept him apart from us, kept him… no matter what we said, what he said, nothing changed."

"They didn't tell me," Seokmin said, eyes wide. "I would have told them…." He sucked in a breath. "I told them you were a pack, that you wouldn't work as well alone. I thought they didn't hear me. Instead, they decided to prove me wrong, and proved me right." He rubbed his hands on his pants. "I'm sorry. I didn't know they were doing this."

"They said they didn't want you to know," Sunghwa said. 

Seokmin scowled. "I'll see what I can do to help him now," he said.

"Bring him back to us," HongJoong said.

"As soon as I can," Seokmin said, and strode toward the infirmary.

When he got close to the infirmary, he could hear something wasn't right. He didn't know what until he got inside to find Mingi struggling on the bed. He lay on his right side, his legs bound at the ankles and knees, his arms bound behind him at wrists and elbows. Two scientists stood on either side of the bed, trying to make him be still and failing.

Seokmin paused a moment to think, to try to remember what he'd seen the group do when they'd been together. When he remembered, he jolted forward, dodging around the scientist at Mingi's back, and gently ran his fingers through Mingi's hair. It didn't feel… quite right. the strands felt thicker than his own hair, slicker and… he couldn't even decide. It didn't matter. It only mattered that Mingi calm down.

Mingi froze, the sensation so familiar, so needed, that he barely kept from whimpering. Whoever did that - it didn't feel like any of the others, but he couldn't see who - did it again, and he sighed, relaxing. He still felt… fragile, disconnected in a way he didn't understand. It didn't make sense. He knew he used to be alone a lot, remembered the times he didn't want anyone around. And now….

A third time, and his eyes started to close, the feeling of drugs swamping him again. He fought them off, not wanting to lose this chance to get out, to go back to the others.

"Get those off his arms," a half-familiar voice said, angry and sad. "Otherwise you won't be able to help him."

"He doesn't need anything from us," one of the scientists said, scorn in his voice. He stood behind Mingi. "You realize you just ruined the experiment."

"You realize you almost had a riot on your hands," the half-familiar voice said. "I told you, they're a pack now. You made them that way. When they heard what happened--"

"You told them?"

"Of course I told them!" 

Seokmin. His name was Seokmin. He'd introduced himself, watched them and took notes. Mingi had seen him. His eyes were kinder than the others. They liked him better than anyone else, but if they all had to die, none of them would spare him. 

Maybe they'd change that. He pressed his head into the hand in his hair, and it stroked again.

"You might have contaminated the whole experiment!"

"Do you know what would have happened if he'd died?" Seokmin asked.

Mingi went even more still, listening to the nuances around him. Breathing quickened, someone shifted - not Seokmin, he didn't think - and someone else rubbed the back of their neck. It sounded like they'd considered this possibility, and weren't comfortable with it.

"We'd have had a body to bury," the scientist in front of him said.

"You'd have had seven enraged young men who know how to kill and desperate enough to do anything to get out and get revenge for their pack member," Seokmin snapped. "That's my first guess. They're also human enough to know how to hide it until they could use it. I might have contaminated your experiment, but I might also have saved all our lives."

So he knew. He'd have to tell HongJoong as soon as he could. If he could.

"They wouldn't." The scientist sounded incredulous.

"Why not?" Seokmin asked, his voice soft. "What have you done to make them think twice about slaughtering us all? I don't want to die because of your stupidity. Or even because of your ignorance."

"We had to know."

"Now you know," Seokmin said flatly. No matter his tone, though, his hand in Mingi's hair stayed gentle. "I suggest you let me take him back, and I suggest, strongly, that you let them all spend time together. All of them, right now. They'll do more to get him healed than anything you do here."

To Mingi's relief, the bands on his ankles and knees came off, and then whoever took the bands off hesitated. "Are you sure about his arms?" one of the scientists asked. 

"Yes," Seokmin said evenly. 

The bands on his elbows fell away. "You can take them off his wrists when you get him to the others," the scientist said nervously.

"Fine."

Mingi actually whimpered when the hand left his hair, and then a steadying hand on his elbow helped him sit up. He looked around, focusing for a moment on each of the scientists, then he looked at Seokmin.

"Come on," Seokmin said. "They'll go and get the others together, and you can join them."

Mingi stood up, wavering, and leaned into the hand still on his elbow. He didn't say anything, hadn't felt like saying anything for awhile.

Seokmin led him out of the infirmary and down an unfamiliar hallway. "How long has it been since you spent any time with the rest of them?" he asked softly.

Mingi looked at him and shrugged.

Seokmin nodded. "I can probably guess," he said. They turned a corner, and Mingi stiffened, hearing the other's voices over someone who was trying to calm them. Seokmin stopped. "Let's get this off before they see you," he said, and quickly took the band off his wrists. Mingi stretched his arms, nodded at Seokmin in thanks, and jogged off to where he could hear the rest of them. He barely noticed Frankenstein 1 standing in the doorway, pushing the man out of the way to get through faster. He collapsed next to HongJoong, relieved to be there with them again.

Before the door had closed and locked, they all collapsed together, curled around and on top of Mingi, and his muscles finally relaxed. He knew where they all were, who was where, and it felt better, felt like… like home. 

HongJoong lay near his head, his breathing near Mingi's ear helping to calm him down more even than Yunho's hand in his hair. Sunghwa kneaded his thigh, and Yeosang lay on top of him, head tucked under Mingi's chin. Jongho's legs lay across his, getting messed up with Yeosang's, although neither of them complained. WooYoung pressed against his side, and San lay against him, one hand under Mingi's shirt and pressed on his ribs. It felt like heaven.

"How did you get back?" HongJoong asked after a long, silent time.

Mingi struggled to say anything, his jaw aching. "The observer," he said, his voice raspy from disuse. "Seokmin. He came and got me. They said…." His voice broke, and Yunho tweaked his ear, then went back to petting him. "They said it was an experiment. He didn't know about it. He was angry."

"Do you think we can trust him?" 

Mingi thought for a moment, trying to get his mind to work, but it didn't want to. Home, it said. Safe. Sleep. He fought it. "I want to say yes. I think so. I'm not sure. It felt real, but I'm… not sure how reliable I am."

HongJoong hummed softly. "You want to keep him alive."

"If possible," Mingi said. "I don't know." He stiffened, remembering. "He knows. He knows what happened to us."

"What do you mean?" Sunghwa asked gently.

Mingi took a breath. "It's… he knew, that if I'd died - and they knew it was a possibility--"

Growls from the others interrupted him, Yeosang's rumbling in Mingi's chest. HongJoong didn't stop them, and eventually they quieted again.

"They knew I might have died. He told them that if I had, they'd have had a riot. That you'd have broken out to get revenge. He said…." He thought back, trying to remember through everything that had happened. "They'd have seven young men who knew how to kill, and desperate enough to get out and get revenge. He said… that you were human enough to hide it until you could use it." 

Jongho sat up. "We're not… human?"

"Not entirely," Sunghwa said, and rubbed his back. "It's okay. We're not-quite-human together."

Jongho lay down again. Mingi could feel his tension still.

"What else?" HongJoong asked. 

"He asked them why you, why we would ever think twice about slaughtering them all. That they'd done nothing to make us think otherwise. And he didn't want to die because of their stupidity or their ignorance."

HongJoong hummed again. "He doesn't know, but he suspects," he mused. Then he sat up. "Jongho."

Jongho untangled his legs from Yeosang's and scooted up to where HongJoong sat, and then crawled into his lap. "I'm sorry," HongJoong said softly, hugging Jongho and petting him. Jongho relaxed. "We thought you knew."

"I… wasn't sure, because no one ever said anything," Jongho said, sounding small and frightened.

"We will make sure to say something, next time," HongJoong said. 

Around Mingi, they shifted, bringing Jongho into the middle with him, and then Mingi, feeling safe and having told all he needed to, drifted off to sleep.

The group acted differently around Seokmin after that. He wondered if it had something to do with what he'd told Mingi, or what Mingi might have overheard in the infirmary. The whole idea of an experiment. It might have happened when he spoke to HongJoong, had not challenged him, when he'd gone to visit after Mingi had broken. At any rate, whatever it was, they'd changed around him.

Nothing too obvious, of course, because that would have been a bad idea, but he noticed. They were all the more aware of him, less secretive around him. It was… nice. He got to study them, to see how they interacted, how things worked with them, everything. It was interesting. He wrote everything down, of course, recorded everything. The more they knew, the better.

And, if they were lucky, they'd learn not to do that again.

All at once the scientists began talking about restarting, about doing things differently, about things that made him wonder if he'd made a mistake in recording all his observations. They hadn't learned at all. Or, they'd learned the wrong things.

Then he overheard something that made him drop his pen in surprise. "What did you say?" he asked.

"We're deciding what to do with this group, now that we've learned all we can from them," Dr. Lee said casually. "They're too big a group for anyone to want them."

Seokmin tried not to show how worried that made him, modulating his voice so he didn't sound freaked out. "What are you thinking?"

Dr. Lee shrugged. "We haven't, yet. We'll discuss it at the next meeting, though, so I'll see you tonight. We'll want your input." 

Seokmin nodded, turned away, and checked the internal email. There it was, a notice of the meeting that evening, with notes to bring ideas for what to do with them. It sounded… ominous. Not so much the words, but the context. 

It started out better than he'd thought it would be, discussions on where to put them, what to do with them. The first idea, to just let them go, was shot down so hard the poor Doctor Kim didn't offer another idea the rest of the meeting. 

Seokmin didn't add anything until the discussion wound down. Then he stood up and looked around the table. "We have to do something," he said. "I don't know what, either, but we made these boys the way they are, and we're the reason they don't fit into the rest of the populace anymore. We have the responsibility to find them a place, or make one for them."

The head scientist looked around the table, then nodded at Seokmin. "I hear you," he said, and Seokmin sat down. "I propose we dispose of these boys, and start over."

Seokmin stared at him, stunned into silence as the rest of the table glanced at each other - not at him - and then agreed. "You can't do that," he said, horrified. "You can't just kill them."

"Why not? As you pointed out, we made them. We have the right therefore to end them as well." The head scientist waved off any further objections, and Seokmin sat in appalled silence as they talked about the best way to end the lives of their experiments.

Not even people. Experiments. 

He trailed after the others as they left the conference room, and bit his lip. They hadn't decided exactly what they were going to do, but they'd decided - probably before they'd even called the meeting - that the boys must be done away with. To his surprise, none of them tried to watch him, none of the scientists seemed worried that he might break the boys out.

Seokmin already knew he couldn’t break them out. He didn’t have the clearance, for one. He could grab a minute to talk to HongJoong, ostensibly while observing him while he was alone. “They’ve decided you aren’t what they want,” he said, standing outside HongJoong’s cell, clipboard and pen in hand.

HongJoong, concentrating on a 3D puzzle meant to keep them from being too bored, glanced up at him before going back to his activity. “They’re going to destroy you all.”

HongJoong froze, just an instant. 

"I wanted you to know," Seokmin went on, his voice still low. From the silence around him, the others could hear as well. "I can't help you any more than that, and I don't know if there's anything you can do. I wanted you to know."

"Thank you," HongJoong said.

Seokmin turned away and strode off, not sure if he'd survive this. He wouldn't be surprised if he didn't, and he couldn't blame them. It was, after all, his fault the scientists knew so much about them. So he'd just… deal.

Seokmin knew he only had a couple of days before things went belly up. He spent his time off preparing, sending all the information he had to his real boss, including money to pay off the last of his bills and his updated will. He fully expected to die when HongJoong and his broke out, and he was - mostly - okay with it.

And, at the first hint, he'd be ready to release a virus into the computer system. Hopefully, they'd give him the time to do that.

It didn't take any of them long to see that things were changing. Mingi kept his eye on the doors, on the people feeding them, as did the rest of them. HongJoong's news about the scientists deciding to kill them had not surprised them, although getting the news from Seokmin had. He told them in their time together, to just be together, to forge the bonds they needed. This time, they lay on the floor in a star pattern, heads in, shoulders almost touching. "We'll try to keep him alive," HongJoong said.. "If it's not possible, make it fast and painless."

"Not painless for the rest?" Yeosang asked.

"Don't take forever on them, but I don't care if they are in pain when they die."

On the way back to their rooms, Mingi pulled HongJoong aside in the corridor on the way, keeping up with the others. "Thank you. For at least trying to keep him alive."

HongJoong ran his hand through Mingi's hair, and Mingi sighed, leaning into the touch. "He deserves the chance," he said quietly, and then they had to separate.

Mingi was surprised to be paired up with Yeosang in a battle that afternoon. He hadn't been in the arena since his break, and he wasn't sure how this would go. Yeosang's hand on his arm helped him settle down, helped ground him. "We're not trying to kill them," Yeosang said. "Just disarm them."

Mingi nodded. He'd heard HongJoong's order, but it helped to be reminded. He could do this.

They moved together as soon as the door opened to let them in, pausing just inside to take a look at the situation.

These men were heavily armed and armored. Yeosang's eyes narrowed. "Don't let them shoot you," he said. "Stick together. I don't like that there are six of them."

That would be rough. "One at a time, or as a group?" Mingi asked, head tilted as he watched them move. "They're not very fast."

"No, so we have to be. Group, if we can." Yeosang tapped Mingi's arm and the two shot forward, slamming into the nearest soldiers and going over them to the next set. By the time they'd knocked the next two down, the first were starting to get up. Mingi went back to take them out, letting Yeosang go to the next two, and then he went through the middle two again to help Yeosang with the two in the back.

Within seconds, they’d taken all six down and stood quietly, listening as much as watching. In the observation booth, no one but Seokmin watched them. The other scientists scribbled down notes. "Can you keep their attention?" Yeosang asked.

Mingi bit his lip to hide a smirk. "I'm pretty sure I can," he said, bent down, and hefted one of the men. Yeosang grinned at him and headed for the doorway the soldiers came in through. Mingi didn't watch him, tossing the man toward the wall away from the direction Yeosang had gone. He hit with a satisfying thud, and the room behind the observation window exploded into movement and sound. It amused him, although he didn't show it. He picked up another body.

The gate clanged open and more men came through. None of them noticed Yeosang, who slipped through behind them. Mingi turned on the new soldiers, let the body slide back to the ground, and held his hands up. He didn't show any fear, watching them come closer, relaxing as if they expected him to obey them.

The overhead lights shifted to red and an alarm blared. The soldiers facing Mingi started and looked at each other. Mingi shot forward, shouldered through the first line, took out the next with well-placed punches, and slipped through the closing gate they’d just come in. He tugged it shut, hearing it lock just as one of the still standing soldiers reached it.

Yeosang grinned at him, and tossed him a knife. He recognized it as one of the weapons some of the earlier guards had carried. He tucked that one away and took the next three Yeosang handed him, and then they went on a search to find the rest of the pack. It was time to end this, and get out of here.

Seokmin went for the door of the observation room as soon as the alarm sounded, and ran for his office. He didn't have much time, and he knew it. He plugged in the thumb drive with the virus on it, and started to upload it.

The door slammed open, and he looked up. "WooYoung," he said, sort of a gasping sound. "Give me just a minute, I just… I want to get rid of the information they have on you. I don't want to give anyone else a start."

WooYoung hesitated in the doorway. Seokmin registered the blood splattering his shirt and arms, and then the knife in his hand. The scientists sent the soldiers against them with those knives in the beginning. Seokmin swallowed hard and glanced at the computer to check the progress of his download. Still a bit to go. “It might take awhile. I’ll be here when you come back.”

A hand, just as bloody, grabbed WooYoung's shoulder and pulled him out, and then Mingi stood there, his eyes wild, blood splattered as well, a knife Seokmin recognized in his hand. "What might take a while?" he asked, his voice hard and raspy.

"I'm uploading a virus, to make sure the research they did is unusable," Seokmin stammered. "I don't want them - anyone," he amended, "to try this again, to use this information to do what they did to you again." He glanced at his computer, and then it beeped, and he sighed. "Okay, done. I've done as much as I can. I'm ready."

Mingi smiled, and Seokmin wondered why he didn't feel more horror at that. Blood spattered and everything, he still looked young and carefree. "Stay here and hide under your desk," he said. "You can say we didn't find you." He left the door open when he went, and Seokmin ejected the thumb drive, stuck it in his pocket, and crawled under his desk.

The complex stood a fair distance from the city, and from any help. The men and women who’d created this hadn’t believed anything could happen. It took almost two hours for the emergency crew to get there and make their way through the mess to his office. He nearly brained himself when someone in red looked under the desk and he threw himself back. All he’d seen was that red, and he’d figured they’d returned to kill him off after all.

The alarm turned off shortly after that, and the fireman who helped him out from under his desk told him to keep his head down and his eyes on his feet. He didn't see even a footprint of blood on his way out, and sat on the back of the ambulance as someone looked him over.

He answered questions as well as he could, keeping the answers short and truthful. They didn't ask if he'd talked to the experiments or anything like that, only what had happened. "I went for my office as soon as the alarm went off," he told the investigating officer between sips of hot coffee that warmed him. "I got under my desk, and left the door open. I think they might have looked in, but I made it look like I wasn't there, and they apparently accepted that at face value." 

He filled in what details he did know, that it started with experiments number four and six, that they'd worked together to distract the guards and get out. He didn't know exactly what had happened, what had set the alarm off, but he could guess that number four had opened the doors to the rest of them, letting out, and that had done it.

At a break in the questions, he looked at the fireman that had brought him out. "Did anyone survive?" he asked.

"We found a group of injured men in what looked like an arena," he said. "Most were unconscious, and still are. Only one looked like he'd died."

"What about the infirmary?" Seokmin asked.

"The patients were untouched, although we found all the doctors dead," the man said, and shook his head. "It didn't make sense."

Seokmin nodded. "There's no honor in killing someone who can't fight back," he said.

The policeman interrogating him jumped on that. "Honor?" he asked.

"Yes," Seokmin said. "They had that. They weren't stupid, they knew who was actually in change, who gave the orders. The guards, those that they had already defeated, why would they kill them?"

"You sound like you admire them."

"I… had a hand in making them," Seokmin said. "I do admire them. I'm glad they didn't find me," he added, not having to feign his hand shaking.

They left him alone after that, and he gripped his hands together. _Wherever you are, I hope you stay safe_, he thought to himself, and leaned back and closed his eyes. _Be safe._


End file.
